Without commenting on the style: The remark does illustrate the need for at least three data points, for a phenomenon to be called exponential. --Rich --- Quoting Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net>:
In the weekly NY Times column about proper usage, a commenter writes:
<< A note about "exponential": technically, the term refers to numbers that are increasing by a fixed (compounded) percentage, rather than a fixed amount, per unit of time. So it is entirely possible that the number of schools teaching Chinese has increased by a steady 18% per year from 300 a decade ago to 1,600 today; that would indeed be an exponential increase, though it's unlikely the author of the article did the research to confirm this.
Am I the only one who thinks this comment's writing style looks familiar?
--Dan
_____________________________________________________________________ "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi." --Peter Schickele
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